The original founders of the Pirate Bay, the Internet’s largest copyright infringement ring, used to brag about how they were technically obeying Swedish law. Well, Swedish law changed to close up the technicality they were using – they were facilitating mass copyright infringement, specifically of works by name, without hosting the bits themselves – and the founders were arrested and convicted. The new owners thought | Read More »

Delay, obfuscate, distract. The anarchists are doing everything they can to try to keep Silk Road drug ring founder Ross Ulbricht from facing justice. His lawyers want his trial delayed and are slinging mud about FBI, and his fellow anarchists are attempting to intimidate the judge. America used to bar anarchists from entering the country. These days it’s easy to see why that was wise.

Anarchy is back. The last time anarchy was a noticeable political movement in the world, bomb throwing anarchists were killing heads of state and government leaders, as part of their scheme to take the whole system down, and impose socialist rule. Of course they claimed socialist rule didn’t really count as rule, because ideology.

Well, these days world leaders are much better protected, so instead the anarchists are going after websites and just trying to disrupt, particularly online. We must be mindful of this, create cybersecurity policies that let government and industry share information (through bills like CISA), and make sure to investigate and prosecute these crimes.

The Global Warming fraudsters have to cheat their data in order to ‘hide the decline’ of temperatures. Likewise, it’s turning out that the left is going to have to cheat in order to make it look like American Internet competition is terrible. they’re going to do this by cheating the definitions by changing them mid-stream, in order to create a decline. Liars all, the Net Neturality/Universal Broadband left.

The longer you look at regulatory policy in this country, the more you run into special interests looking out for their own personal payoffs. But seriously, I feel like terrestrial broadcasters are the worst of all when it comes to acting entitled. Waah waah we’re big fat socialists and we don’t want to have to pay the people who made the stuff we’re broadcasting. Meanwhile, Waah waah we want to restrict competition amongst ourselves to retransmit our broadcasts on cable.

Virtually every company, every industry I write about in this space goes around lobbying in DC for some advantage. But nobody gets so many special protections and is so rabid in protecting them at any cost, as terrestrial broadcasters. At some point, small government folks are going to have to smash this racket.

If you want an explanation of the ‘Heartbleed’ bug in the news, Francis Cianfrocca gives a good explanation in Coffee and Markets. But more important is his point about NSA. He always speaks carefully about that organization, but in his roundabout way he made an excellent point: NSA has a dual mandate. NSA’s job is both to break into enemy communications, and to protect our communications. The Heartbleed bug is so devastating that if they knew about it, they’d have to work to protect us from it, before someone else could use it against us. That’s how bad it is. There’s no way they knew about it a year.

As I mentioned Friday night, I had so much to cover I was breaking up Tech at Night into two parts. This is part two.

Remember when I called out Wikileaks for abandoning their ally Edward Snowden in Russia? They claimed he had settled there and their job was done, but I knew better. Well, here’s the proof that they’ve used him up and thrown him away: he’s still trying to get out of Russia, this time to Brazil. Spying for Wikileaks doesn’t even pay.

This winter has been so cruel to me. I just have been getting every cold there is. I’ve been a magnet for bugs, and they just keep knocking me flat. So, it turns out I have so many links built up to go through for tonight’s Tech, that I’m going to break this up into two pieces. Some tonight, some over the weekend.

Democrats may be playing their usual game of blame the victim as an excuse to grow government, but know this: If you used a debit card at Target in the last month, you probably should get it replaced immediately. No joke. These cards are being actively sold for Bitcoin.

The argument for the ECPA (email warrant law) reform in a nutshell: because a lot of people store important data on other people’s servers, we need to tighten warrant laws for that data. I don’t buy the necessity, especially with FISA also under attack. If terrorists have data on Google’s servers, I want Google to be able to hand over that data. But this idea is popular and I expect it to pass eventually.

Two reminders I usually make here. Use good passwords, and make sure not to run software you don’t trust. Keep your software updated. If you use it, consider switching away from the leading target online, Microsoft Windows. Government is trying to catch these guys, but you have to lock your own door at night.

Much like WMATA, I took Veteran’s Day half-off. I did the reading but not the writing.

You know how I’m already throwing words like ‘anarchoterrorist’ around groups like Anonymous? Well now they’re siding with Hamas in Gaza against Israel and all doubt is removed. It’s amazing that the blood libel exists in some form in the 21st century, but I guess anarchists are just that terrible.

No doubt leering at the staff, too: Reid (D-Nev.) said Tea Party Republicans are preventing progress on an energy efficiency bill by offering amendments on ObamaCare and other unrelated issues. “We’re diverted totally from what this bill is about. Why? Because the anarchists have taken over,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “They’ve taken over the House and now they’ve taken over the Senate. “People | Read More »